Masterpiece Stories

Painting Of The Week: Werner Holmberg’s Road in Häme

Europeana 29 April 2018 min Read

The Finnish National Gallery recently applied an open licence (CC0) to its digital reproductions of out-of-copyright works, joining leading institutions in the OpenGLAM movement to promote free and open access to digital cultural heritage. These artworks are also published in Europeana and we’re very happy to share them with the world. Today, we’d like you to learn more about Werner Holmberg’s Road in Häme and watch a great video created by The Finnish National Gallery.

Painted in 1860 Road in Häme or Hot summer day, is the result of sketches that Werner Holmberg made around Tampere in northern Häme. In the painting, a horse-drawn postal wagon is travelling along a 19-century rolling country road, through a pine forest in Tavastia. The viewer is surrounded by the nature and the sensation of an extremely hot day. Despite a sense of authenticity, the landscape is a combination of several sketches and the result of careful, time-consuming finishing work. In its closeness to nature the painting, Road in Häme, represented the radical, innovative art of its time.

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